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Online hatred of women in the Incels.me Forum: Linguistic analysis and automatic detection
Abstract
This paper presents a study of the (now suspended) online discussion forum Incels.me and its users, involuntary celibates or incels , a virtual community of isolated men without a sexual life, who see women as the cause of their problems and often use the forum for misogynistic hate speech and other forms of incitement. Involuntary celibates have attracted media attention and concern, after a killing spree in April 2018 in Toronto, Canada. The aim of this study is to shed light on the group dynamics of the incel community, by applying mixed-methods quantitative and qualitative approaches to analyze how the users of the forum create in-group identity and how they construct major out-groups, particularly women. We investigate the vernacular used by incels, apply automatic profiling techniques to determine who they are, discuss the hate speech posted in the forum, and propose a Deep Learning system that is able to detect instances of misogyny, homophobia, and racism, with approximately 95% accuracy.
... Incels forums have been attracting media attention and have reached a large segment of the population in North America in recent years. Incels (abbreviation of involuntary and celibate; Jaki et al., 2019) represent mainly self-identified cis-gendered heterosexual men who feel entitled to sexual and romantic connections and blame women for their celibacy (Bratich & Banet-Weiser, 2019;Jaki et al., 2019). According to the media, incels are "one of the internet's most dangerous subcultures" (Beauchamp, 2019). ...
... Incels forums have been attracting media attention and have reached a large segment of the population in North America in recent years. Incels (abbreviation of involuntary and celibate; Jaki et al., 2019) represent mainly self-identified cis-gendered heterosexual men who feel entitled to sexual and romantic connections and blame women for their celibacy (Bratich & Banet-Weiser, 2019;Jaki et al., 2019). According to the media, incels are "one of the internet's most dangerous subcultures" (Beauchamp, 2019). ...
... Several studies affirm that incels forums are a vehicle for radicalization towards extremist and antifeminist beliefs, feelings, and behaviours (Baele et al., 2021;O'Malley et al., 2020). However, evidence suggests that posts in incel forums threatening explicit violence and incels who are likely to engage in violent behaviour represent a rather tiny proportion (Cottee, 2020;Jaki et al., 2019). Some incels also attempt to dissociate themselves from the toxic community by prohibiting violence in some incel forums (Scaptura & Boyle, 2020), for example, the former r/IncelsWithoutHate. ...
The forums of involuntary celibates (incels) are easily accessible and increasingly receiving attention from media, scholars, and non-incels, mostly for their troubling content against women. This study aimed to (a) qualitatively describe the different impressions of visitors and (b) quantitively examine the sociodemographic characteristics associated with the prevalence of each category of impressions. The sample comprised 390 adults (43% women; 2.56% self-identified incels; M age = 26.86) who have visited incel forums at least once. They completed an online questionnaire on sexual inexperience in adulthood and described their impressions of incel forums in an open-ended question. An inductive content analysis revealed that impressions of incel forums were positioned on a continuum ranging from threat (39.53%) to shelter (11.90%) with four intermediate categories: incel forums as testimonies of dysfunctional thoughts (20.04%), incel forums perceived as odd (11.02%), ambivalent impressions (3.45%), and incel forums as gatherings of individuals with difficulties (14.14%). Chi-square analyses revealed that, among participants who perceive incel forums as a threat, women, other genders individuals, and non-incels were overrepresented compared to men and incels, who were more likely to perceive incel forums as a shelter. t-test analyses revealed that participants who perceived incel forums as a shelter were older at first sexual intercourse. These results suggest that incel forums are not perceived as dangerous by all outsiders and that those who have more positive impressions (i.e., men, late sexual starters) are those most likely to relate to them. The implications for future research and professional practice are discussed.
... Indeed, studies show that sexually inexperienced individuals are more fearful of judgment and mockery from others than their sexually experienced peers (Fleming & Davis, 2018;Fuller et al., 2019). Consequently, the cumulation of these problems could contribute to depression and could also fuel hostile attitudes toward others (Bratich & Banet-Weiser, 2019;Haase et al., 2012;Treuting & Hinshaw, 2001), notably in the form of male misogyny (Jaki et al., 2019) in men who hold women responsible for their lack of sexual opportunities (Bratich & Banet-Weiser, 2019). This resonates with the concept of a sexual double standard that may influence how men and women respectively approach their LST. ...
... We found markedly lower psychological wellbeing in the late compared to the on time group of participants, even at age 25. This corroborates studies that have demonstrated the harmful effects of developmental delays compared to peers (Haase et al., 2012;Pekel-Uludağlı & Akbaş, 2019), particularly in men (Jaki et al., 2019). Hence, an LST may be associated with difficulties beyond the sexual sphere, especially in men. ...
... Therefore, their derogation from these norms could have negatively affected men with LST self-perceptions and contributed to higher depression symptoms on the one hand and strong feelings of injustice on the other hand, which could translate into hostility toward others. These findings resonate with recent studies on incels (i.e., heterosexual cisgender men who are "involuntarily celibate"), who congregate online and blame societyespecially women -for their sexual inexperience (Blommaert, 2018;Bratich & Banet-Weiser, 2019;Jaki et al., 2019;Maxwell et al., 2020). ...
According to the social clock and statistical norms, a transition into sexual activity after age 18 years is considered late. This longitudinal study examines whether late sexual transition is related to delays in the achievement of developmental tasks and lower psychological well-being in emerging adulthood for heterosexual individuals. A sample of 300 participants (61.3% women) was assessed annually from age 15 to 22 years and again at age 25, of which 43 reported sexual intercourse at age 19 or older or remained virgins in emerging adulthood. Results indicate that late sexual transition, particularly for men, is prospectively associated with still being at school, working fewer hours per week, being single and having no kids at age 25. It is also positively associated with depression and anxiety symptoms, interpersonal sensitivity, hostility, lower self-esteem, and lower happiness. This study enriches the understanding of slower developmental trajectories and the associations between late sexual transition and subsequent trajectories in emerging adulthood.
... Indeed, incels' online language often has features of hate speech, primarily relating to sexism and misogyny but also to homophobia and racism. These themes often co-occur with violent rhetoric (Farrell et al., 2019;Jaki et al., 2019). The last domain of harm associated with incels is also the most known: societal violence. ...
... Since aggressive and violent content is widespread in the incel forums, the mechanisms through which misogyny, hate speech, and radicalization processes translate into violence are recurrent topics in the analyzed contributions (Farrell et al., 2019;Jaki et al., 2019;O'Donnell & Shor, 2022; them, males and females can be divided into categories based on physical appearance and attractiveness (Koller & Heritage, 2020). In line with this, members of the incel community strongly focus on their physical characteristics as an obstacle to obtaining intimate relationships and sexual intimacy (Lindsay, 2022;Daly & Reed, 2021). ...
... Caruso and colleagues (2021) highlighted the fundamental role of social media in the persuasion and recruitment phase to prepare for violent criminal activity; this process is typical of traditional terrorism. Certainly, incel forums are a relevant source of radicalization, as their offensive, misogynistic, and homophobic language is more likely to fuel individuals' rage rather than calm it down (Jaki et al., 2019;Hoffman et al., 2020;Regehr, 2020;Verza, 2019). Additionally, the continually changing situation of online platforms due to banning and closing incels' forums may play a role in implementing radicalization processes leading to the development of socially undesirable and potentially violent online behaviors (Horta Ribeiro et al., 2021;Young, 2019). ...
The incel community—which is characterized by an anti-feminist misogynistic ideology and has been linked with terrorist attacks—has become an increasing focus of attention among social scientists, policy makers, and professionals involved in preventing radicalization and extremism. In this systematic review we provide an up-to-date account of scientific research on the incel phenomenon. Using PRISMA guidelines, we initially identified 593 records, primarily through online database research. After full screening and duplicate removal, 78 articles remained. We divided the analyzed records into four macro-categorizations, covering theoretical, technological, violent, and personality-related components of the incel ideology. We examined the clinical implications of the analyzed findings, focusing on the potential criminological and pathological consequences related to the incel status—on a personal, interpersonal, and societal basis. Finally, suggestions regarding clinical intervention and future research foci are provided based on the knowledge gaps identified through the review.
... The misogyny characterizing incel culture and its potential for violence have received extensive attention from the academic community [6,7], to the extent that a significant portion of scientific research has primarily focused on analyzing misogyny, often resorting to linguistic analysis in online contexts [8,9]. ...
... Other studies [3,13,14] have identified mental health issues, primarily untreated, such as depressive symptoms, autistic symptoms, post-traumatic stress, anxiety symptoms, and even suicidal ideation. The topics examined range from online misogynistic language [8,15] to the Big Five personality traits of incels [16] and their use of pornography [17]. Other studies have focused on incels' experiences, recriminations, ideology, and the prevalence of mental health diagnoses [3,13]. ...
... It is essential to point out that the community of involuntary celibates is a subculture, a branch of a large tree, the so-called "Manosphere," whose fulcrum is the support of the rights of the male gender [21]. Not infrequently in this culture, it leads to anti-feminist and sexist visions, in which feminism is seen as a burden that crushes the male counterpart, and women are dehumanized and mortified [8,[22][23][24][25]. ...
The global scholarly attention has shifted toward the phenomenon of inceldom (involuntary celibacy) due to violent incidents involving self-identified incels. There is a growing number of platforms promoting the proliferation of these ideologies, and cases of violence are becoming increasingly severe. This research constitutes one of the limited empirical investigations within an Italian context. This study aims to examine the mental well-being and its associations with self-esteem and temporal perspectives among individuals identifying as incels. Fifty-eighth male subjects aged between 18 and 45 years old participated in the study. Participants, recruited through online communication channels, completed three questionnaires focused on assessing mental well-being, self-esteem, and temporal orientation. The results reveal that incel subjects exhibit low self-esteem and are inclined toward a hedonistic present-focused perspective aimed at immediate gratification rather than future planning. Of note are the data related to the future temporal perspective, which does not show any predictive value on the well-being of incel subjects. Their ability to plan for the long term, defer immediate gratification, and control behavior through the anticipation and evaluation of possible consequences appears diminished. This study discusses the implications of developing targeted intervention programs, given that the incel phenomenon is becoming increasingly widespread. It is, therefore, crucial not to underestimate the potential threat that inceldom could pose in the future.
... The term has since been co-opted by heterosexual men, who see themselves as undesirable and unable to establish sexual/romantic relationships (O'Malley, Holt & Holt, 2022). Incels suggest there are numerous reasons for their status, including lookism, technological developments (e.g., dating apps), social awkwardness, and feminism (e.g., Cousineau, 2020;Jaki et al., 2019;Preston et al., 2021). Incels views are characterized by both misogyny and fatalism, as they see women's preferences for physically attractive men as biologically fixed, which leaves average and unattractive men with "no hope" of establishing a relationship (e.g., Halpin, 2022;Menzie, 2022;Witt, 2020). ...
... Situating incels within the larger manosphere is important, as our research suggests that users of incels.is arrive at the community already endorsing misogyny, rather than becoming misogynistic through their participation on the site (Halpin, Richard, Preston, Gosse & Maguire, 2023). As such, men might become misogynistic in other forums, before identifying with the inceldom. ...
... Incels are ubiquitously misogynistic, with users of incels.is using misogynistic slurs three times more frequently than "neutral" terms for women (e.g., "woman"), and explicitly targeting women of color through a combination of racism and sexism (Halpin et al., 2023). Likewise, incels venerate mass murderers Alek Minassian and Elliot Rodger as "heroes" and "saints" (O'Donnell & Shor, 2022;Witt, 2020). ...
In 1989, Marc Lépine murdered 14 women at L’École Polytechnique de Montréal. We demonstrate how involuntarily celibate (“incel”) men celebrate Lépine and claim him as a member of their community. Our analysis draws on 637 comments made on incels.is, the main English‐language incel forum, that explicitly mentions Marc Lépine. We argue that incels use Lépine to situate themselves in relation to masculinity and to justify violence against women. First, incels orient to both hegemonic and subordinate masculinity by arguing that feminists are waging a gender war against men. Second, incels celebrate Lépine as a methodical and efficient murderer, connecting both themselves and Lépine to hegemonic masculinity. Third, incels describe both themselves and Lépine as victims of feminists and use this perceived subordination to justify violence against women. We discuss findings in relation to theories of masculinity and policies regulating online communities.
... Until recently, there has been little research undertaken to explore incels. The work that has emerged has generally centered around qualitative and textual analyses of popular incel forums on Reddit or stand-alone websites that have painted incels as violent and misogynistic (Baele et al., 2021;Ging, 2019;Glace et al., 2021;Helm et al., 2022;Jaki et al., 2019;Jones, 2020;Maxwell et al., 2020;O'Malley et al., 2020); however, due to the methodologies employed and the prevalence of "shit-posting" among incels, these works may better describe the sociocultural context of incel communities rather than incels themselves (Daly & Nichols, 2023;Guimarães et al., 2019;Jasser et al., 2022). ...
... In exploring what words most frequently co-occurred with the word women in the incels.me forum, Jaki et al. (2019) identified a number of word pairings that represented either similar maliciousness or deviousness, including that they are "entitled," "parasites," "whores," and "sluts," who "crave" both "superior males" and "big dicks." Jaki et al. (2019) labeled these as examples of rampant misogyny that characterized a whopping 30% of threads analyzed. ...
... forum, Jaki et al. (2019) identified a number of word pairings that represented either similar maliciousness or deviousness, including that they are "entitled," "parasites," "whores," and "sluts," who "crave" both "superior males" and "big dicks." Jaki et al. (2019) labeled these as examples of rampant misogyny that characterized a whopping 30% of threads analyzed. What is lost in this classification is the clear distrust that incels have in women, which may underlie the expression of misogynistic content, whether deliberate or not. ...
Incel refers to an online group of young males who feel frustration and despair at being repeatedly neglected on the dating market. Despite gaining notoriety for a number of public attacks, the majority of incel research is comprised of analyses of their forums rather than of individuals themselves. This provides a good contextual overview of the incel community but does not capture the experiences of incels or identify how and why this group responds so strongly to rejection. A total of 38 incel and 107 non-incel males (MAGE = 23.60, SD = 4.90) were recruited through Reddit and two institutional forums to participate in the present online study, completing questionnaires pertaining to their dating app experiences and their mental and relational well-being. Large differences between incels and non-incels were found, with the former reporting greater depressive symptoms, rejection sensitivity, relationship status influence, and insecure attachment. These were all associated with perceived popularity, which incels scored lower on. Incels also adopted more liberal dating app strategies, yet reported fewer matches, conversations, and in-person outcomes. The pattern of results reported sheds new light on the role that dating apps may play in incels' efforts to attract mates and how these frustrations manifest. This is integral both to understanding the broader incel discourse as well as any efforts to develop treatment strategies with self-identified incels who seek counseling.
... Many incels engage in misogynistic online hostility (Jaki et al., 2019), and a small proportion of incels have committed acts of violence (Costello & Buss, 2023). An estimated 59 people have been killed by incels worldwide (Hoffman et al., 2020). ...
... Incels also share several characteristics with adult virgins, including a significant fear of having irretrievably "missed out" on meaningful life experiences (Stijelja & Mishara, 2022). In recent years, research on incels has grown, examining a range of topics, including textual analysis of misogyny (Jaki et al., 2019), and experiences using dating apps (Sparks et al., 2022). However, the bulk of prior incel research employed secondary analysis, which is informative but limited because many incels use bravado and exaggeration in order to engage in what they describe as "trolling" (Daly & Nichols, 2023). ...
... If low mate-value men doubt their abilities to protect and provide (needed for benevolent sexism), they may not embrace the benevolent sexism that can offset hostility and facilitate romantic attraction (Bosson et al., 2021;Gul & Kupfer, 2019). Much of incels' online rhetoric can be considered misogynistic (Jaki et al., 2019) and we know that unwanted celibacy is a predictor of misogyny in men (Grunau et al., 2022). The misogyny that pervades the incel community may be indicative of a low sense of self perceived mate value that exists within individual incels. ...
Mating represents a suite of fundamental adaptive problems for humans. Yet a community of men, called incels (involuntary celibates), forge their identity around their perceived inability to solve these problems. Many incels engage in misogynistic online hostility, and there are concerns about violence stemming from the community. Despite significant media speculation about the potential mating psychology of incels, this has yet to be formally investigated in the scientific literature. In the first formal investigation of incel mating psychology, we compared a sample (n = 151) of self-identified male incels with non-incel single males (n = 149). Findings revealed that incels have a lower sense of self-perceived mate-value and a greater external locus of control regarding their singlehood. Contrary to mainstream media narratives, incels also reported lower minimum standards for mate preferences than non-incels. Incels (and non-incel single men) significantly overestimated the importance of physical attractiveness and financial prospects to women, and underestimated the importance of intelligence, kindness, and humor. Furthermore, incels underestimated women's overall minimum mate preference standards. Our findings suggest that incels should be targeted for interventions to challenge cognitive distortions around female mate preferences. Implications for incels' mental health and misogynistic attitudes are discussed, as well as directions for future research. "Women seem wicked when you're unwanted."-Jim Morrison (The Doors)
... Though some work in natural language processing (NLP) has focused on features of misogynist language in general Samghabadi et al., 2020;Guest et al., 2021), online incel communities are known for significant lexical innovation (Farrell et al., 2020;Gothard, 2021). Training with data from incel forums would enable misogynist hate speech classifiers to identify the neologisms and novel ideological features of this dangerous form of online misogyny (Jaki et al., 2019). ...
... Quantitative and computational studies of the manosphere often focus on the unique misogynist language use of these communities. Gothard (2021) and Jaki et al. (2019) surface incel jargon by comparing word frequencies in incel Reddit posts with subreddits and Wikipedia articles outside of the incel movement, while Farrell et al. (2020) find frequent incel terms not present in English dictionaries and expand their lexicon with a word embedding space. Such word frequency analysis, as well as hand-crafted lexicons, are often used to measure and study misogyny in the manosphere (Heritage et al., 2019;Farrell et al., 2019;Jaki et al., 2019). ...
... Gothard (2021) and Jaki et al. (2019) surface incel jargon by comparing word frequencies in incel Reddit posts with subreddits and Wikipedia articles outside of the incel movement, while Farrell et al. (2020) find frequent incel terms not present in English dictionaries and expand their lexicon with a word embedding space. Such word frequency analysis, as well as hand-crafted lexicons, are often used to measure and study misogyny in the manosphere (Heritage et al., 2019;Farrell et al., 2019;Jaki et al., 2019). Pruden (2021) and Perry and DeDeo (2021) use topic modeling to characterize narratives and map out user trajectories on incels.is ...
... Incels are not a homogenous group and vary in their adherence to and engagement with the views expressed by others online Jaki et al., 2019;Ribeiro et al., 2020Ribeiro et al., , 2021Sugiura, 2021). It is imperative that researchers contextualize differences among participants in online incel communities in order to better identify the behaviors and risk factors that may shape their risk of offline violence (O'Malley et al., 2022;Sugiura, 2021). ...
... Online forums are highly conducive to the formation of deviant and criminal subcultures, as they can provide a space where participants can share their grievances, frustrations, and seek out support from like-minded individuals (Deshotels & Forsyth, 2020;Jaki et al., 2019). Individuals interact almost entirely online as the anonymity of the Internet may be especially appealing to individuals who feel outcast (Freiburger & Crane, 2008;T. ...
Involuntary celibates, or incels, have been of heightened interest to scholars and practitioners due to their ongoing engagement in misogynistic and violent discourse. The incel subculture is complex, requiring unique strategies to develop effective interventions. The present study investigates patterns in incels’ online posting behaviors and whether acceptance of subcultural beliefs is reflected in variations of user engagement and posting behaviors over time. A sample of postings are drawn from a well-known incel-moderated forum and analyzed using group-based trajectory modeling. The results demonstrate that three distinct posting trajectory groups are present. The findings demonstrate heterogeneity among users’ posting behaviors in the forum over time and suggest that variation may be a reflection of users’ subcultural beliefs.
... The community attribute their experiences of a prolonged lack of emotional and physical intimacy at the feet of purportedly hypergamous, genetically hardwired women, ostensibly facilitated by an unjust, feminist-usurped, gynocentric social order (Sugiura 2021). Incel ideological discourse obtains its validity and rigidity through radical dualism (Jaki et al. 2019), as a closed-off ingroup critical and vitriolic towards wider society, with concentrated animosity towards women. This adversarial positioning is embedded within the 'blackpill', a mutant offspring of 'redpill' philosophy inherent to other digital reactionary antifeminist movements bound within a loosely collective body known as 'the manosphere' (Van Valkenburgh 2021). ...
... Although mainly a digital manifestation (Jaki et al. 2019), the incel subculture has come under increased academic scrutiny following accumulating instances of associated real-world violence (O'Donnell and Shor 2022; Tastenhoye et al. 2022). As these acts of violence arose from a subculture with a structured and radical ideology, much debate regarding the classification of incel ensued. ...
Although an important theoretical tool within the field of critical study of men and masculinities, mishandling of Connell’s theory of multiple masculinities and subsequent developments frequently overlooks the relational and legitimizing components central to the hegemonic masculine construct, producing conceptual ‘slippage’. This case study demonstrates such misapplication, examining four investigations within the emerging field of research concerning the antifeminist masculine performances and ideological constructs associated with involuntary celibates (incels). Each study lacks acknowledgement and demonstration of the political mechanics of relational legitimacy that define hegemonic masculinity, producing, instead, trait analyses of non-hegemonic dominant or dominating masculine behaviour resting on fixed, often toxic character types. As novel and emergent communities of men receive scholarly attention, it is important researchers heed repeated attempts to guide correct use of theory by engaging with the history and evolution of employed concepts.
... Research into the incel movement has grown substantially in the past five years. The vast majority of such research has explored these communities by conducting online content analysis from websites, forums and message boards (for example, see: Helm et al., 2022;Jaki et al., 2019). This provides an important and useful analysis, particularly when conceptualising and developing research methodologies such as the present study. ...
... On the other hand, they were substantially left of centre on questions regarding homosexuality, corporate profits and social benefits. The finding on homosexuality is interesting given that linguistic analysis has found homophobic language on incel forums (Jaki et al., 2019). One should take caution before inferring these findings to mean that there is no overlap between the far right and incels, or the incel typical worldview. ...
This is the largest survey of incels to-date (n=561), taken across the UK and the US. It explores their demographics, beliefs, mental health, neurodiversity, networks and propensity to violence.
... In future work, we plan to delve further into forecasting by implementing temporal and propagation features (e.g., Meng et al. (2023); Dahiya et al. (2021); Lin et al. (2021); Almerekhi et al. (2020);Jaki et al. (2019)). Based on Pelicon et al. (2021), we also plan to expand language coverage, with German- (Mandl et al., 2019) and Spanishlanguage (Basile et al., 2019) hate speech datasets being two of the most prominent candidates due to their similarity to English and Italian, respectively. ...
... Preliminary candidates were selected by collecting single-and multi-word items that ranked in the top 500 for keyness, for a total of 1k analyzed items. Racism and misogyny are very characteristic elements of the language of incels (Silva et al., 2016;Ging and Siapera, 2018;Jaki et al., 2019). Therefore, we manually selected characteristic hateful terminology for this speech community by considering racist and misogynous terms that are not typically found in general language, i.e. having high keyness scores. ...
... There is research which purports incels as extremists engaging in unique and spectacular forms of misogynistic violence, focusing on instances of domestic terrorism and mass shootings (Chan, 2022;Hoffman et al., 2020). Whilst other studies (Helm et al., 2022;Heritage & Koller, 2020;Jaki et al., 2019) found that most members of incel communities appeared to be nonviolent, only a few engaged in misogynistic and toxic hate speech (however, why they would choose to participate in misogynistic spaces is unexplained). Other research contends that incel violence goes beyond such attacks and that the harm they produce does not need to be spectacular or physical to have serious effects on women (Kelly et al., 2021;Sugiura, 2021). ...
... Whilst at the surface level, incel-specific content might appear to have a diminished presence on TikTok, and despite TikTok's Community Guidelines (2023) according to which, hateful content including gendered prejudiced speech and hateful ideologies are not permitted, our findings suggest that to evade content moderation, incel content on TikTok employs covert language to present, explain and diffuse misogynistic, harmful and established incelosphere tropes and theories. This is a departure from previous incel research examining community dynamics and discourse on more secluded forums and websites, where more overt ideological expressions, including mentions of and calls to violence and dehumanising language, were identified (Baele et al., 2019;Chang, 2020;Helm et al., 2022;Jaki et al., 2019). However, our findings support previous understandings of the blackpill itself, indicating that the same incel tropes (lookism, heightpill, Chads, etc.) are utilised on both fringe media and on TikTok, but that the style in which these are communicated diverge with content on TikTok to be more implicit, insidious and palatable. ...
Incels (involuntary celibates), a subgroup of the so called ‘manosphere,’ have become an increasing security concern for policymakers, researchers, and practitioners following their association with several violent attacks. Once mostly contained on niche men’s forums, redpilled and blackpilled communities and theories are gaining prominence on mainstream social media platforms. However, whilst previous research considerably enhanced our understanding of the incel phenomenon and their presence on Reddit and secluded incel forums, incel’s presence on mainstream social media platforms is understudied and their presence on TikTok is yet to be addressed. The present paper examines the incel subculture on TikTok, through an analysis of incel accounts, videos and their respective comments, to understand the role mainstream social media platforms play in the ‘normiefication’ and normalisation of incel ideology and discourse. The findings suggest that on TikTok the expression of incel ideology takes a covert form, employing emotional appeals and pseudo-science to disseminate common incelosphere tropes. Further, we demonstrate how the process of mainstreaming incel beliefs is facilitated by their interconnectedness with wider sexism and structural misogyny. The harms generating from this association are conducive to the normalisation of blackpill beliefs and the reinforcement of misogyny, sexism and justification of rape culture.
... Scholars have explained the emergence of 'misogynistic' or 'male supremacist' terrorism with reference to group identity, masculinity threat, hostile sexism, internalized masculine honor beliefs, and processes of online radicalization, to name a few (Baele, Brace, & Coan, 2019;Jaki et al., 2019;Scaptura and Boyle, 2020;Vandello and Cohen, 2003). Others have shown that local real-world mating market 1 I focus on the incel community because it openly embraces male supremacist ideology, hatred of the feminist movement, and the perceived entitlement to sex from women (Silva, Capellan, Schmuhl, & Mills, 2021). 2 It is important to note that while there are individuals who identify as incels express so-called "blackpilled" beliefs (i.e., extreme and negative views about themselves, women, relationships, and society as a whole), not all incels share or embrace these extreme views. ...
... Many individuals who identify as incels and who are struggling with frustration in their sexual and romantic lives are not violent. This is reflected in online fora, where only a small subset of Incel forum users, about 10%, are responsible for most of the hateful content (Jaki et al., 2019). While this paper explains the emergence of the incel movement, it largely focuses on incels who express deep-seated resentment, anger, and frustration. ...
Objectives
Mass shooters, violent extremists, and terrorists, who are overwhelmingly male, exhibit misogynistic attitudes and a history of violence against women. Over the past few years, incels (“involuntary celibates”) have gathered in online communities to discuss their frustration with sexual/romantic rejection, espouse male supremacist attitudes, and justify violence against women and men who are more popular with women. Despite the link between misogyny and mass violence, and the recent emergence of online misogynistic extremism, theories and empirical research on misogynistic extremism remain scarce. This article fills this gap.
Methods
An integration of literatures pertaining to the basics of sexual selection, evolved male psychology, and aggression suggests there are three major areas that should be considered imperative in understanding the emergence of misogynistic extremism.
Results
Individual factors (e.g., low status) and social forces, such as a high degree of status inequality, female empowerment, and the ease of coordination through social media, give rise to misogynistic extremism.
Conclusions
The unique interaction between evolved male psychology, the dynamics of the sexual marketplace, and modern technologies can create an ecology in which incel beliefs can thrive and make violence attractive.
... Perhaps by presenting a more even-handed depiction of gender prejudice and discrimination, individuals can feel both more recognized for their suffering and also more empathetic for the suffering of other genders. Online communities, such as those who identify as involuntarily celibate [126], suggest gender relations might be tenuous or deteriorating. Better understanding the sources of grievances and resentments might be an important step in promoting compassion between men and women. ...
Despite well-documented disparities disadvantaging women (e.g. discrepancies between men and women in salaries and leadership roles), we argue that there are contexts in which disparities disadvantage men. We review the literature suggesting harm to women is perceived as more severe and unacceptable than identical harm to men, a bias potentially rooted in evolutionary, base rate, stereotype-based and cultural shift explanations. We explore how these biases manifest in protective responses toward women and harsher judgements toward men, particularly in contexts of victimization and perpetration. Our review aims to complement the existing literature on gender biases by presenting a balanced view that acknowledges men and women face unique challenges. By understanding these biases, we hope to foster a more equitable discourse on gender and harm, encouraging empathy and validation of suffering irrespective of gender. This holistic approach aims to de-escalate gender-based conflicts and promote effective interventions for both men and women.
... Online platforms such as Reddit, 4chan, and various incel-specific forums have played a crucial role in the development and perpetuation of incel ideology. These platforms provide spaces for incels to share their experiences, grievances, and often extreme views, further entrenching their sense of alienation and resentment (Jaki et al., 2019). ...
This study aimed to explore how certain marginalized adult white male incels choose to present themselves to a global YouTube audience and address the misunderstandings about them perpetuated by often negative media portrayals. This qualitative case study, conducted on July 24, 2024, analyzed four purposively-sampled YouTube confessionals from adult white male incels of varying ethnicities and ages, published between April 13, 2022, and May 13, 2024. The study included: “YouTuber 1” (70 subscribers, 2,946 views, 16.5 minutes long, 62 likes), “YouTuber 2” (1,440 subscribers, 5,321 views, 17 minutes long, 145 likes), “YouTuber 3” (893 subscribers, 20,663 views, 8 minutes long, 552 likes), and “YouTuber 4” (2,040 subscribers, 9,933 views, 47 minutes long, 193 likes). These videos were selected for their confessional-style content. They were transcribed using a YouTube transcribing tool and analyzed thematically, following Bantugan’s (2024) approach to studying males sharing on YouTube about their social marginalization. Incels often experience profound social isolation and rejection, which significantly impacts their responses to intimacy issues. Many report feeling less socially and sexually successful compared to others, which leads to feelings of inadequacy. Judgments based on appearance further exacerbate these difficulties, as a lack of validation can harm self-esteem and hinder social and romantic opportunities. Mental health issues, such as autism and borderline personality disorder, contribute to these struggles, with mental health conditions often linked to challenges in social interactions. Perceptions of fundamental gender differences also influence their interactions and expectations with the opposite sex. Despair and a nihilistic outlook are common, leading to a belief that their situation is unchangeable and fostering maladaptive coping strategies. Additionally, a deep-seated desire for recognition and understanding underscores their need for acceptance, with feelings of being misunderstood worsening negative emotional outcomes.
... With the emergence of newer platforms and social media in the 2000s, cases of digital gendered power dynamics and (sexual) violence against women increased in different forms, such as verbal aggression, doxing and porn revenge (Ging and Siapera 2019; Powell and Henry 2017). Moreover, patriarchal discourses popularized by online misogynist communities began to spread across different social media networks and Internet platforms (see Jaki et al. 2019). ...
In September 2018, American Justice Brett Kavanaugh was accused of sexual assault by Dr. Christine Blasey Ford during his nomination to the US Supreme Court. The sexual allegations provoked a crisis in American society concerning the rights of female American citizens and created a heated debate among X (formerly Twitter) users, who commented on the event and expressed their (dis)affiliation. Research has shown that X is one of the most sexist and abusive social media services due to the constant spread and negotiation of different discourses relating to rape culture on the platform (Mendes et al. 2018). Consequently, the objectives of this research are to examine the linguistic patterns and discourses employed by X users to denounce patriarchal oppression and negotiate the identities of the different social actors involved in Kavanaugh’s confirmation process. To do so, two datasets of posts (previously known as ‘tweets’) containing the opposing hashtags #KavanaughConfirmation and #NoKavanaughConfirmation were analyzed and contrasted drawing on Corpus-Assisted Discourse Analysis tools (i.e., keywords and concordances) (Partington et al. 2013) and Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis (Lazar 2005). The results revealed a high presence of keywords concerning gender and violence to construct identities of victims and perpetrators. However, not only were such identities related to sexual violence but also political and institutional violence. In addition, the analysis revealed the creation of discursive protests on X to resist patriarchal discourses and practices in American society.
... Aside from this blatant misogynist hate speech, research on discourse(s) of male supremacist spaces shows that the bonds (presumably cisgender) men create here also tend to rely on hybrid and fascist masculinities that reproduce assumptions of male superiority and misogyny (Ging 2019; Glace, Dover, and Zatkin 2021; Kelly and Aunspach 2020), as well as stereotypical and problematic dynamics of in-fighting and bullying (Jaki et al., 2019). Bullying on these forums also serves to reinforce the exclusion of racial, ethnic, gender, and sexual 'Others', thereby re-establishing systems of male and white supremacy (Chang 2020) based on racist, misogynist interpretations of a hierarchical societal gender order that creates ripe conditions for radicalization. ...
In this short essay, we show that, despite the recent turn to including masculinity and male supremacist ideology into Preventing and Countering Violent Extremism programming (P/CVE), current deradicalization approaches often remain based on ideas about male victimhood and gender hierarchies that are eerily similar to those that are at the core of male supremacist ideology and (interpersonal and political) misogynist violence. We argue that to effectively address male supremacist radicalization, P/CVE approaches must challenge and disrupt their own underlying male supremacist views of gender relations.
... Therefore, the assumption that incels are an ideological movement (DeCook & Kelly, 2022;Tolentino, 2018;Williams et al., 2021) or the next domestic terror threat (Hall, 2020;Hoffman et al., 2020) is not as definitive as some may claim. The forum researchers themselves also concede that although they have identified themes and linguistic occurrences of revenge and violence, these views represent a small minority of users (0.87%, 10%) and instances (2% over a 6-month period; Jaki et al., 2019;O'Donnell & Shor, 2022). ...
Although sexual and romantic rejection is not exclusive to the 21st century, it is only recently that this experience has developed into a form of identity and community rallying point. Involuntary celibates (incels) have been associated with violent attacks and misogyny in the mainstream and, more recently, have become the subject of exploratory research that has identified greater rates of mental and relational health issues among the incel community. What is left to be determined is why individuals who are experiencing romantic or sexual rejection would adopt the incel label, given the notoriety associated with this group. This research aimed to investigate psychosocial influences and drivers behind incel identity development by conducting interviews with self-identified incels. Using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis, six superordinate themes are identified. The study reveals how social rejection and exclusion impact incel identity formation. It suggests that theories like interpersonal rejection, social identity, and attribution theory can help explain why some men adopt the incel label. Overall, the study highlights the complexity of the incel phenomenon and the need to provide more effective support for self-identified incels.
... Cheng, Danescu-Niculescu-Mizil, and Leskovec (2015) predict accounts that will engage in antisocial behavior for popular websites and detect antisocial behavior in comments, while Chelmis and Yao (2019) predict if a hateful comment on an Instagram post will be followed by further hateful comments. Jaki et al. (2019) focus on the Incels.me forum and propose a deep learning classifier that analyzes the users' language and detects instances of misogyny, homophobia, and racism. ...
Alas, coordinated hate attacks, or raids, are becoming increasingly common online. In a nutshell, these are perpetrated by a group of aggressors who organize and coordinate operations on a platform (e.g., 4chan) to target victims on another community (e.g., YouTube). In this paper, we focus on attributing raids to their source community, paving the way for moderation approaches that take the context (and potentially the motivation) of an attack into consideration. We present TUBERAIDER, an attribution system achieving over 75% accuracy in detecting and attributing coordinated hate attacks on YouTube videos. We instantiate it using links to YouTube videos shared on 4chan's /pol/ board, r/The_Donald, and 16 Incels-related subreddits. We use a peak detector to identify a rise in the comment activity of a YouTube video, which signals that an attack may be occurring. We then train a machine learning classifier based on the community language (i.e., TF-IDF scores of relevant keywords) to perform the attribution. We test TUBERAIDER in the wild and present a few case studies of actual aggression attacks identified by it to showcase its effectiveness.
... r/Incel, created in August 2013, was a community of self-denominated "involuntary celibates" adhering to "The Black Pill," the belief that unattractive men are doomed to romantic loneliness and unhappiness . Since their inception, the Incels community has been closely related to terrorist attacks and the production of misogynistic content online (Jaki et al. 2019;Hoffman, Ware, and Shapiro 2020). ...
Fringe communities promoting conspiracy theories and extremist ideologies have thrived on mainstream platforms, raising questions about the mechanisms driving their growth. Here, we hypothesize and study a possible mechanism: new members may be recruited through fringe-interactions: the exchange of comments between members and non-members of fringe communities. We apply text-based causal inference techniques to study the impact of fringe-interactions on the growth of three prominent fringe communities on Reddit: r/Incel, r/GenderCritical, and r/The Donald. Our results indicate that fringe-interactions attract new members to fringe communities. Users who receive these interactions are up to 4.2 percentage points (pp) more likely to join fringe communities than similar, matched users who do not.This effect is influenced by 1) the characteristics of communities where the interaction happens (e.g., left vs. right-leaning communities) and 2) the language used in the interactions. Interactions using toxic language have a 5pp higher chance of attracting newcomers to fringe communities than non-toxic interactions. We find no effect when repeating this analysis by replacing fringe (r/Incel, r/GenderCritical, and r/The Donald) with non-fringe communities (r/climatechange, r/NBA, r/leagueoflegends), suggesting this growth mechanism is specific to fringe commu- nities. Overall, our findings suggest that curtailing fringe interactions may reduce the growth of fringe communities on mainstream platforms.
... For example, gendertrolling, a phenomenon characterized by multiple individuals using vicious language to insult a specific gender, posed a significant threat to targeted individuals [72]. The users of an online discussion forum Incel, a virtual community of isolated men without a sexual life, viewed women as the source of their issues and usually utilized the forum to express misogynistic hate speech [58]. Nevertheless, the constructiveness attribute of gender debate has received relatively less attention in discussions surrounding gender issues. ...
... Cottee (2020) agreed that incel violence should not be classified as terrorism, arguing that the prevailing sentiment among incels is apathy, not a duty to enact violence to bring about political or societal change. In fact, only a small portion of users on incel forums endorse violence and are responsible for most of the hate speech on these platforms (Jaki et al., 2019;Moskalenko et al., 2022). However, a lot of incel online activity can be considered extremist, because of its conspiratorial narrative and essentialist categorization of society in which women are deemed as unfairly privileged and incels are seen as victims (S. ...
Scholars are at the beginning stages of understanding the trajectory of incels' deradicalization process. This study aimed to gain insight into the trajectories of individuals who have left or expressed a desire to leave inceldom, by focussing on the turning points that propel incels to deradicalize from the misogynistic ideology associated with inceldom. To achieve this, 28 threads related to the process of exiting inceldom were extracted from r/IncelExit, a subreddit which caters to incels seeking support and guidance in said process. A reflexive thematic analysis allowed for the identification of three distinct stages in the process of exiting inceldom: 1) pursuing dating, 2) attempting to change ideology, and 3) struggling to leave the incel ideology. Our findings show that, initially, the prospect of entering a romantic relationship was perceived as the primary means of leaving inceldom. However, after experiencing a few attempts at dating, a turning point was reached when individuals recognized the importance of changing their ideology. This stemmed from the realization that the incels' ideology had a detrimental impact on their overall well-being. Consequently, they turned to their peers on the subreddit for strategies for ideological transformation. Various courses of action were proposed, with particular emphasis on the importance of addressing fundamental needs through self-care practices. Simultaneously, participants reported a range of challenges encountered during the process of leaving inceldom. These findings underscore the requirement for interventions adapted to this clientele's needs to accompany them through their deradicalization journey. The clinical implications of these findings are discussed.
... However, concerns have been raised regarding the quality of the data and the data collection methods since the methods used are prone to sampling biases, and the datasets are not sufficiently filtered or validated [12]. Other work has examined methods for detecting incel communication [8]. ...
... Recent studies on incels have shed light on the widespread prevalence of moral devaluation and the propagation of moral emotions like hatred, anger, and resentment within the insular online spheres of the incel community. These online spaces often serve as "gateway portals to hatred" [18][19][20][21][22] as documented in the literature. ...
This article investigates conceptions of morality within the framework of ressentimentful victimhood in the manosphere, while also exploring avenues for resistance among young individuals encountering the “hatred pipeline”. In Study 1, we use the emotional mechanism of ressentiment to examine how incels construct narratives of victimhood rooted in the notion of sexual entitlement that remains owed and unfulfilled, alongside its “black pill” variant emphasising moral and epistemic superiority. Through a linguistic corpus analysis and content examination of 4chan and Incel.is blog posts, we find evidence of ressentiment morality permeating the language and communication within the incel community, characterised by blame directed at women, and the pervasive themes of victimhood, powerlessness, and injustice. In Study 2, we delve into young individuals’ reflections on incel morality and victimhood narratives as they engage with online networks of toxic masculinity in the manosphere. Drawing from semi-structured interviews with young participants who have accessed the manosphere, we explore their perceptions of risks, attribution of blame, and experiences of empathy towards individuals navigating the “hatred pipeline”. Our analysis underscores the significance of ressentiment in elucidating alternative conceptions of morality and victimhood, while shedding light on the potential for acceptance or resistance within online environments characterised by hatred.
... Overall, then, evaluation in online fora is expressed in non-metaphorical, adjectival phrases with negative value. In fact, this study contributes to similar research in these lines (Jaki et al., 2019;Lorenzo-Dus & Nouri, 2020;Prażmo, 2020) on the type of evaluative value found in this set of forum threads. The predominance of negative value might also be explained by some of the affordances (namely anonymity) users seek when engaged in communicative exchanges in online forums (Prażmo, 2020). ...
The present article contributes to research on evaluation by addressing two complementary objectives: first, we present a protocol for the identification and annotation of evaluation in English discourse and, second, we show the results of the implementation of the protocol in the annotation of evaluation in a sample of a corpus of four genres. We first describe the protocol by discussing the theoretical and methodological grounding of the annotation scheme, the criteria, the categories, the steps for the implementation of the protocol and an illustrative example of the application of the protocol to a short extract. We subsequently provide the preliminary results of a pilot study with the frequency of evaluative expressions across the four genres. Results show that while adjectives and non-metaphoric evaluative expressions are overall more frequent, there are differences regarding the preference for positive or negative value and regarding the frequency of function.
... Incels are known for having negative self-views, mental health concerns, and other personality concerns (Aulia & Rosida, 2022;Bieselt, 2020;Ciocca et al., 2022;Costello et al., 2022;Grunau, 2020;Jaki et al., 2019;Justin et al., 2022;Sparks et al., 2022b;Stijelja, 2021;Stijelja & Mishara, 2022). The present study found continued evidence of these attributes, but it also found evidence of incels wanting to positively grow as individuals. ...
Involuntary celibates, known as incels, have gained media attention due to violent incidents involving members of their community. Previous studies have examined their violent norms, radical ideologies, and views on women, but none have explored why incels may disengage from the online incel community. This study utilizes a media content analysis framework to analyze data from an open-access forum (n = 237) and understand the values of former incels. Inductive media content analysis reveals four main themes: (1) leaving inceldom, (2) social interactions of incels, (3) self-conception of incels, and (4) the incel philosophy. These findings shed light on the dynamics within the incel community for those who abandon the incel lifestyle. Future research should investigate the reasons for incels leaving their community and explore strategies to support them in this process. Intervention approaches could be developed to assist incels during their transition.
... This imbalance leaves incels without options for partnership and sex, the victims of discrimination called "societal lookism." 13 Incels form an "imagined community of practice," that defines itself against people who will never understand or pay attention to them, that is, women and attractive men. 14 Misogyny, from the Ancient Greek mīsoguníā, translates to hatred of women. ...
Involuntary celibates (“incels”) refers to a group consisting mostly of heterosexual men that exists predominantly in online spaces. These men are united by a belief that they are victimized by a postfeminist society, leading to an inability to engage in sexual intimacy with women. Recent acts of mass violence have been linked to self-identified incels, leading to an increased need for awareness of incel worldviews, argot, and demographics among psychiatrists. Limited research exists to describe this heterogenous group, with existing data suggesting higher rates of depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation within the demographic. This column reviews the incel worldview, existing literature, how to identify an individual with incel beliefs based on vocabulary and internet usage, and treatment modalities.
... Incels use the internet, specifically social media sites such as Reddit and 4chan, as a way to organize campaigns against women and those men who possess the privileges of hegemonic masculinity (Ging, 2019). The demographic composition of Incel communities has not been systematically measured (Jaki et al., 2019). Instead, Incel forums and websites have distributed their own surveys to measure demographic characteristics of their members. ...
In a gender-segregated digital space known as the Manosphere, a group of men calling themselves “Incels,” or involuntary celibates, express feelings of hostility and hatred towards women. Incels hold a low position on a masculine hierarchy where the men who hold the most power in society are those who have access to women’s emotional and sexual services. Incels are characterized by feelings of entitlement to women’s services and aggrievement by their inability to access them. As a result, they often appear to fantasize about or engage in acts of violence to compensate for their lack of masculine privilege. However, there are men who try to escape these harmful ideologies and leave the Incel community altogether. In this study, I analyze 130
Reddit threads from a community of men attempting to leave the Incel community. This case study permits the examination of the ways low-status men challenge and/or reinforce the masculine hierarchy. Findings demonstrate the pervasive power of the masculine hierarchy. Aside from a few exceptions, men who were presumably attempting to leave the Incel community embraced their low status on the masculine hierarchy and accepted the inevitability
of that hierarchy. Their reluctance to challenge the masculine hierarchy suggests they recognize that this hierarchy both justifies their subjugation under more privileged men and their power over women. In other words, for these men, the masculine hierarchy is simultaneously a prison and a bastion of masculine privilege.
... Cheng et al. [10] predict accounts that will engage in antisocial behavior for popular websites and detect antisocial behavior in comments, while Chelmis and Yao [8] predict if a hateful comment on an Instagram post will be followed by further hateful comments. Jaki et al. [24] focus on the Incels.me forum and propose a deep learning classifier that analyzes the users' language and detects instances of misogyny, homophobia, and racism. ...
Alas, coordinated hate attacks, or raids, are becoming increasingly common online. In a nutshell, these are perpetrated by a group of aggressors who organize and coordinate operations on a platform (e.g., 4chan) to target victims on another community (e.g., YouTube). In this paper, we focus on attributing raids to their source community, paving the way for moderation approaches that take the context (and potentially the motivation) of an attack into consideration. We present TUBERAIDER, an attribution system achieving over 75% accuracy in detecting and attributing coordinated hate attacks on YouTube videos. We instantiate it using links to YouTube videos shared on 4chan's /pol/ board, r/The_Donald, and 16 Incels-related subreddits. We use a peak detector to identify a rise in the comment activity of a YouTube video, which signals that an attack may be occurring. We then train a machine learning classifier based on the community language (i.e., TF-IDF scores of relevant keywords) to perform the attribution. We test TUBERAIDER in the wild and present a few case studies of actual aggression attacks identified by it to showcase its effectiveness.
... Much prior work on the manosphere has been qualitative, such as ethnographies (Lin, 2017;Lumsden, 2019;Van Valkenburgh, 2021). There have been a few quantitative analyses of their language, usually focusing on phrase and word frequencies in a few communities (Farrell et al., 2019;Gothard et al., 2021;LaViolette and Hogan, 2019;Jaki et al., 2019). As an example involving word vectors, Farrell et al. (2020) uses static embeddings identify the meanings of incels' neologisms by inspecting words' nearest neighbors. ...
This article contributes to the growing corpus of knowledge concerning the incel movement by scrutinizing how claims of marginalization are mobilized in online incel communities to present incels as privileged subjects of knowledge. The study elucidates how incel marginalization is wielded as a legitimizing experience, conferring epistemic privilege upon self-identifying incels by distinguishing between an ‘us’ of marginalized and enlightened incels, and a ‘them’ consisting of duped and privileged ‘others’. It also examines the role of partaking in incel discussions and incel ideology to achieve an incel standpoint, where lived experience is transformed into counter-hegemonic knowledge. Inspired by social movement theory, the article points to similarities between the incel movement’s political mobilization of marginalized experience and feminist standpoint theory and feminist practices in consciousness-raising groups. It argues that this affinity can be understood from the perspective of the dynamic between movements and counter-movements and their tendency to mimic and copy each other’s tactics.
In critique of Habermas's public sphere, Nancy Fraser offered the ‘subaltern counterpublic’ – arenas of refuge from and counter-organizing against the wider public. But does this (re)configuration of the public sphere hold in the age of extremism on the internet? I examine the trajectory of incel as a community, interrogating whether this extremist contingent follows Fraser's subaltern counterpublic or if they exemplify a new counterpublic – the ultra altern, or ‘ultern’, counterpublic. I explore the ways that the ultern counterpublic differs from the subaltern and its relationship to the general public sphere, particularly within the critical intervention of the internet. I finally offer a brief analysis of another movement – the KKK – within my new framing, to further detail the differences between the ultern and subaltern counterpublic.
Cases of hate speech linked to Indonesian women using taboo language on social media have risen, leading to many Indonesian women being subjected to criminal penalties. Therefore, research on taboo language must be conducted to resolve cybercrimes. This study discloses the type, category, and adverse effects of using taboo language from a legal perspective. The data were verdicts downloaded from the Supreme Court’s directory. Data were analyzed using the intralingual equivalence method to examine linguistic features such as meaning, information, and speech context. Linguistic forensics was also applied to focus on the language that generates legal cases based on the Indonesian cultural environment according to Jay’s classification of taboos. The results of the study revealed that the women on social media utilized prohibited language, including hate speech in Indonesian and indigenous languages. The taboo languages used by women on social media categorized as cases of hate speech were: 1) sexual references, 2) profane or blasphemous, 3) animal names, 4) ethnic-racial-gender slurs, and 5) references to perceived psychological, physical, or social deviations. The negative impact of using taboo language by women on social media from a legal perspective is a hate speech crime that violates the Indonesian Electronic Information and Transactions Law. This research contributes to handling legal cases by imposing language, gender stereotype theory, and taboo language as potential evidence in hate speech cases.
The Internet serves as a dynamic and expansive space where numerous groups seek to exchange and disseminate their views. Some of those groups aim to promote hateful ideologies, bigotry, conspiracy theories while externalizing their anger. To achieve this, a spectrum of online platforms is utilized, ranging from mainstream social networks to underground forums. Notably, imageboards stand out as fertile ground where these ideologies flourish, due to anonymity, community engagement, and a plethora of hateful content. This study endeavors to examine the prevalence of bigotry in these spaces within the Brazilian context. Natural language processing algorithms provide the possibility to explore discursive features of massive text sets, extracting latent information and patterns in a relatively simple and automated way. This study shows how prejudice forms the basis of the different discourses found in Brazilian imageboards. Notably, these discourses not only echo historically rooted hateful ideologies but also assimilate conspiratorial perspectives and instances of bigotry emanating from non-Brazilian imageboards.
Napjainkban a patriarchális társadalom lassú felbomlása mellett egyre erősödnek a nőkkel szembeni előítéletek, félelmek, és ezzel együtt a gyűlöletkeltő elemek a közbeszédben és a párkapcsolatokban egyaránt. A szerzők kultúrtörténeti áttekintésükben bemutatják a nőgyűlölet (mizogínia) eredetét, és ezzel összefüggésben a feminizmus négy hullámára adott társadalmi reakciókat. Áttekintik azt is, hogy a kora pszichoanalitikus elméletek hogyan táplálták a férfiak félelmét a nőkkel szemben és milyen egyoldalú volt a korai pszichoanalízis nőiségképe, valamint, hogy ez milyen formában jelenik meg ma az elméleti szövegekben. Hogyan tévedhetett ekkorát Freud a nőkkel kapcsolatban, miközben ő volt az az ember, aki a saját és mások érzelmi nehézségeinek érzékeny önvizsgálatából képes volt megteremteni a személyiségműködés, a pszichopatológia és a kezelés egyetemes megértését és alapjait? Hogyan tévedhetett ekkorát Ferenczi, akit ma az interszubjektivitás korai előfutáraként is tisztelünk, szintén a nőkkel kapcsolatban? A cikkben a szerzők a társadalompszichológiai, egyéni fejlődéslélektani folyamatok transzgenerációs mikrotraumáinak szerepére is rámutatnak a nőgyűlölet jelenségének fenntartásában. A szerzők hipotézise szerint az egyéni mikrotraumák generációs ismétlődése és ezek pszichodinamikai összejátszása nagyon megnehezíti a nőgyűlölettel szembeni küzdelmet.
Cet article a pour but de décrire la manosphère anglophone à travers les différentes communautés qui la composent. Au-delà des éléments historiques et idéologiques ainsi présentés, une revue transdisciplinaire de la littérature présentera l’état des recherches en sciences sociales sur la manosphère.
The Incel Movement, characterized by its recent surge in aggressive attitudes towards women and mass violence, has expanded from the Western world to a global scale through mainstream and social media. While psychological studies on this topic have rapidly progressed in the West, there appears to be a gap in understanding the Incel Movement in Turkey. Incels self-identify as individuals who desire but lack sexual or romantic relationships. Originating as an online movement, the Incel Movement translates its misogynistic behaviors and attitudes into acts of mass violence in the real world. This compilation-based study aims to elucidate the concept of incels, their worldview, the sexual frustration-aggression theory, and the biopsychosocial model to explain incel attitudes and behaviors. The processes that drive incels to engage in acts of mass violence are also discussed. The significance of internet forums and dating applications for incels, their coping strategies regarding their circumstances, and their perspectives on psychotherapy are examined in light of the existing literature. Recommendations are provided for researchers, practitioners, and policymakers to address the Incel Movement effectively.
The incel (involuntary celibate) community is an extremist online community that practices intense misogyny, racism, and that glorifies – and sometimes practices - violence. Work to understand the dynamics within incel communities has been hindered by the fact that these communities are spread over many platforms and many of the more popular forums of the past have been banned and their content deleted. In this paper, we present two main contributions. First, we introduce a carefully reconstructed, nearly complete archive of incel forums dating back to 2016, including millions of posts that can no longer be accessed. Then we illustrate a technique for identifying community-specific language and using that as a marker of extremism to track radicalization over time.
Involuntary celibates, or incels, are part of a growing online subculture. Incels are men who are unable to engage in a sexual relationship with a woman and who experience significant distress and anger as a result. In recent years, high-profile incidents of violence perpetrated by incels or those who share incel ideology have increased research attention. Incels communicate online and share several characteristics with other online extremist groups. While only a fraction of incels engage in such violence, a broader spectrum of violence should be considered, including online harassment or general violence against women. This study sought to examine how ongoing engagement on an online incel forum affects changes in incel comments in terms of expressed anger and sadness and use of incel violent extremist language. We collected comments made on an incel forum over a 3-month period. We then identified prolific users and included their comments in our analysis. To assess how their language changed, we used a text-processing program (LIWC: Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count) to assess the extent to which anger, sadness, and incel violent extremist language were expressed in the comments. Our findings indicated that incels express more anger in their comments than users on other platforms such as Reddit, Facebook, and Twitter. However, they did not express greater sadness. Further, we found that incels are already quite angry and sad when they join the forum, and they already use a fair amount of incel vocabulary. Initially, these aspects of their language increase, but they flatten over time. This pattern suggests that introduction to and embracing of incel ideology occurs elsewhere on the Internet, and prior to people joining an incel forum. Implications in terms of prevention of online radicalization and future directions are discussed.
This article provides an overview of linguistic strategies used in the incel community to deindividualize and dehumanize women. Among the most common ways of referring to women there is the use of generic labels (Stacy, Becky), conceptual metaphor (warpig, landwhale) including creative metaphorical morphology (foid, femoid), conceptual metonymy (hole, extrahole), and conceptual metaphtonymy (roastie). The consistent use of such terms within the incelosphere contributes to perpetuating harmful attitudes and potentially even justifying violent and abusive conduct towards women. For this reason, the language of dehumanization in general, and the misogynist discourse of incels in particular, warrants closer attention. This study is carried out within the methodological framework of cognitive semantics and adds to the expanding research on the discourse of the manosphere and the incelosphere.
Misogynist incels have been at the fore of academic, professional and mainstream discussions in recent years. Drawing on a systematic review of 47 studies, as well as my own experience with researching current misogynist and exit-curious incels, this paper explores the strengths and weaknesses of the contemporary incel-focused literature. It summarises and critiques the foundational knowledge that underpins our understanding of the current incel community, conceptualised into themes of incels as oppressors, incels as oppressed and incels as threat. Importantly, this paper interrogates the usefulness of our working definition of the term ‘incel’, calling for greater specificity in the language we use to define, theorise and explain the subsets of the incel community under study. In line with a call for more precise language in empirical works, I explore several areas for future research that will help broaden our understanding of the complexities and contradictions within the broader incelosphere.
O presente trabalho tem como objetivo oferecer uma análise psicológica de caso segundo a perspectiva analítica sobre o fenômeno de ódio coletivo ao feminino, encapsulado em uma subcultura conhecida como incel (termo em inglês significando involuntary celibate), algo de crescente relevância no cenário virtual e físico mundial evidenciado por episódios como tiroteios em massa, ataques - virtuais e pessoais - com um propósito definido e caracterizado por valores ideológicos, psicológicos e sociais relativamente coesos. Para tal, foi realizada
revisão de literatura buscando produção acadêmica em bancos de dados virtuais, que serviu como uma base para traçar um panorama da situação das agressões virtuais existentes nos últimos dez anos e sua cumulação em ataques à pessoas físicas, como no caso a ser trabalhado, do ataque em Suzano, em 2019, a partir do qual foram explorados os motivos desse ataque e suas concepções teóricas usando a teoria Analítica Junguiana para se analisar simbolicamente a dinâmica dos complexos presentes nesse evento. Nessa exploração, foi constatado que uma possível explicação para o fenômeno esteja na relação do conflito interno entre um ego enrijecido pelo pensamento misógino e um desejo inconsciente de se buscar o feminino e uma mobilização sócio-política que leva à radicalização e atos de violência extrema.
Across time, in a variety of forms and spaces -from homes and workplaces to
digital domains of social media- women have become victims of male dominance.
So also are the other vulnerable sections that suffer multi-layered abuse, and
endure sexual harassment in social media. Yet, this phenomenon is insufficiently
explored. Therefore, this article argues that social media spaces have become
domains for sexual harassment and subjugation of women. This article examines
gender-trolling on Twitter as a form of sexual violence against women. Employing
qualitative analyses of the Twitter conversations on Indian journalists, namely
Barkha Dutt, Sagarika Ghose, and Rana Ayyub, it exposes the nature and form of
sexual violence against women on the micro-blogging space, and argues that
social media platforms constitute convenient havens of harassment against
assertive women
Keywords: Twitter, social media, women journalists, sexual harassment, misogyny
Incel, shorthand for 'involuntarily celibate, ' is a violent political ideology based on a new wave of misogyny and white supremacy. These (mostly) young men are frustrated at a world they see as denying them power and sexual control over women's bodies. In their eyes, they are victims of oppressive feminism, an ideology which must be overthrown, often through violence. Incel ideology presents a mythologized view that prior to the sexual revolution in the '60s, every man had access to a female partner; subsequent to the women's empowerment movement, fewer and fewer men have access to a partner. They frame this shift as a profound injustice to men who cannot find a sexual partner, suggesting that society has failed to give men what they are entitled to (access to women's bodies) and that the only recourse is violent insurrection.
The rampage of Elliot Rodger adjacent to the campus of the University of California, Santa Barbara in May 2014 is used as a case study of how a sexually and socially frustrated and isolated young man from a highly privileged background became a rampage shooter. He followed a route typical of post‐Columbine rampage shooters by socializing himself to the role of rampager through reading books that informed and reinforced his worldview, playing first‐person shooter online games, visiting hate group websites, purchasing weaponry, and planning his rampage. The social‐political perspective is advanced as an alternative to the more popular mental illness approach because it addresses three fundamental questions related to rampage shootings: Why are nearly all rampage shooters male? Why are they mostly American? And why have they emerged as a serious social problem since the 1980s? The chapter ends with suggestions about what needs to be done to reduce the number of rampage shootings in the United States.
We have developed a system that automatically detects online jihadist hate speech with over 80% accuracy, by using techniques from Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning. The system is trained on a corpus of 45,000 subversive Twitter messages collected from October 2014 to December 2016. We present a qualitative and quantitative analysis of the jihadist rhetoric in the corpus, examine the network of Twitter users, outline the technical procedure used to train the system, and discuss examples of use.
We have developed a system that automatically detects online jihadist hate speech with over 80% accuracy, by using techniques from Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning. The system is trained on a corpus of 45,000 subversive Twitter messages collected from October 2014 to December 2016. We present a qualitative and quantitative analysis of the jihadist rhetoric in the corpus, examine the network of Twitter users, outline the technical procedure used to train the system, and discuss examples of use.
Misogyny online in forms such as explicit rape threats has become so prevalent and rhetorically distinctive it resembles a new dialect or language. Much of this ‘Rapeglish’ is produced by members of an informal alliance of men’s groups online dubbed the ‘Manosphere’. As both a cyberhate researcher and cyberhate target, I have studied as well as contributed to feminist responses to Rapeglish. In 2016, for instance, I helped build a Random Rape Threat Generator (RRTG) – a computer program that splices, shuffles around, and re-stitches in novel combinations fragments of real-life Rapeglish to illustrate the formulaic, machine-like, and impersonal nature of misogynist discourse online. This article uses Yuri Lotman’s ideas about intra- and inter-cultural conflict involving something akin to the translation of a foreign language to frame the RRTG as one example of the way women are ‘talking back’ both to and with Rapeglish (the latter involving appropriations and subversions of the original discourse).
This Research Paper examines how the white supremacist movement Christian Identity emerged from a non-extremist forerunner known as British Israelism. By examining ideological shifts over the course of nearly a century, the paper seeks to identify key pivot points in the movement’s shift toward extremism and explain the process through which extremist ideologues construct and define in-group and out-group identities. Based on these findings, the paper proposes a new framework for analysing and understanding the behaviour and emergence of extremist groups. The proposed framework can be leveraged to design strategic counter-terrorism communications programmes using a linkage-based approach that deconstructs the process of extremist in-group and out-group definition. Future publications will continue this study, seeking to refine the framework and operationalise messaging recommendations.
Since the emergence of Web 2.0 and social media, a particularly toxic brand of antifeminism has become evident across a range of online networks and platforms. Despite multiple internal conflicts and contradictions, these diverse assemblages are generally united in their adherence to Red Pill “philosophy,” which purports to liberate men from a life of feminist delusion. This loose confederacy of interest groups, broadly known as the manosphere, has become the dominant arena for the communication of men’s rights in Western culture. This article identifies the key categories and features of the manosphere and subsequently seeks to theorize the masculinities that characterize this discursive space. The analysis reveals that, while there are some continuities with older variants of antifeminism, many of these new toxic assemblages appear to complicate the orthodox alignment of power and dominance with hegemonic masculinity by operationalizing tropes of victimhood, “beta masculinity,” and involuntary celibacy (incels). These new hybrid masculinities provoke important questions about the different functioning of male hegemony off- and online and indicate that the technological affordances of social media are especially well suited to the amplification of new articulations of aggrieved manhood.
The issue of hate speech has received significant attention from legal scholars and philosophers alike. But the vast majority of this attention has been focused on presenting and critically evaluating arguments for and against hate speech bans as opposed to the prior task of conceptually analysing the term ‘hate speech’ itself. This two-part article aims to put right that imbalance. It goes beyond legal texts and judgements and beyond the legal concept hate speech in an attempt to understand the general concept hate speech. And it does so using a range of well-known methods of conceptual analysis that are distinctive of analytic philosophy. One of its main aims is to explode the myth that emotions, feelings, or attitudes of hate or hatred are part of the essential nature of hate speech. It also argues that hate speech is best conceived as a family resemblances concept. One important implication is that when looking at the full range of ways of combating hate speech, including but not limited to the use of criminal law, there is every reason to embrace an understanding of hate speech as a heterogeneous collection of expressive phenomena. Another is that it would be unsound to reject hate speech laws on the premise that they are effectively in the business of criminalising emotions, feelings, or attitudes of hate or hatred.
This chapter examines language aggression against women in public online deliberation regarding crimes of violence against women. To do so, we draw upon a corpus of 460 unsolicited digital comments sent in response to four public service advertisements against women abuse posted on YouTube. Our analysis reveals that three patriarchal strategies of abuse — namely, minimize the abuse, deny its existence, and blame women — are enacted in the online discourse under scrutiny and shows how, at the micro-level of interaction, these strategies relate to social identity and gender ideology through complex processes of positive in-group description and negative out-group presentation. We also argue that despite the few comments that explicitly support abuse, this situation changes at implicit, indirect levels of discourse.
This article examines Rodger’s psychological dynamics, drawing on insights gained through an analysis of his autobiographical document. The article highlights Rodger's personality traits and his motivations for murder.
School shooters present a challenge to both forensic psychiatry and law enforcement agencies. The relatively small number of school shooters, their various characteristics, and the lack of in-depth analysis of all of the shooters prior to the shooting add complexity to our understanding of this problem. In this short paper, we introduce a new methodology for automatically profiling school shooters. The methodology involves automatic analysis of texts and the production of several measures relevant for the identification of the shooters. Comparing texts written by 6 school shooters to 6056 texts written by a comparison group of male subjects, we found that the shooters’ texts scored significantly higher on the Narcissistic Personality dimension as well as on the Humilated and Revengeful dimensions. Using a ranking/prioritization procedure, similar to the one used for the automatic identification of sexual predators, we provide support for the validity and relevance of the proposed methodology.
This study investigates the communicative practices in English and German online discussion fora as exemplified by two thematically related sample threads. Combining first- and second-order approaches to (im-)politeness, the paper focuses on the question of how participants use intergroup rudeness as a means of in- and outgroup construction and examines how intergroup rudeness is metapragmatically negotiated as the discussions unfold. The results show that intergroup rudeness as well as metapragmatic comments are handled very differently in the two communities explored. Suggesting cultural preferences, there is a much higher degree of interactivity and a clear preference for negotiation at an interpersonal level in the German discussion group; its English counterpart favours negotiation at an intergroup level. Both threads provide metapragmatic evidence that the frequent use of rudeness tokens does not automatically make rudeness an accepted norm.
As video games have attracted more critical attention and theoretical discourse and games play a more visible part in our media landscape, the modern video game community impacts the wider world of online culture and warrants more detailed study. Using the case of the Dickwolves incident from Penny Arcade.com, the authors address issues of hypermasculinity and sexism within the gaming community and how this lens brings to light issues with a hostile response to the expression of a female identity or femininity. The authors argue that this case highlights how the hypermasculine discourse encourages the overt privileging of masculinity over femininity and discourages women from engaging in gendered discourse within the community.
This paper examines language aggression against women in public online deliberation regarding crimes of violence against women. To do so, we draw upon a corpus of 460 unsolicited digital comments sent in response to four public service advertisements against women abuse posted on YouTube. Our analysis reveals that three patriarchal strategies of abuse — namely, minimize the abuse, deny its existence, and blame women — are enacted in the online discourse under scrutiny and shows how, at the micro-level of interaction, these strategies relate to social identity and gender ideology through complex processes of positive in-group description and negative out-group presentation. We also argue that despite the few comments that
explicitly
support abuse, this situation changes at
implicit
,
indirect
levels of discourse.
Pattern is a package for Python 2.4+ with functionality for web mining (Google + Twitter + Wikipedia, web spider, HTML DOM parser), natural language processing (tagger/chunker, n-gram search, sentiment analysis, WordNet), machine learning (vector space model, k-means clustering, Naive Bayes + k-NN + SVM classifiers) and network analysis (graph centrality and visualization). It is well documented and bundled with 30+ examples and 350+ unit tests. The source code is licensed under BSD and available from http://www.clips.ua.ac.be/pages/pattern.
This paper investigates political homophily on Twitter. Using a combination of machine learning and social network analysis we classify users as Democrats or as Republicans based on the political content shared. We then investigate political homophily both in the network of reciprocated and nonreciprocated ties. We find that structures of political homophily differ strongly between Democrats and Republicans. In general, Democrats exhibit higher levels of political homophily. But Republicans who follow official Republican accounts exhibit higher levels of homophily than Democrats. In addition, levels of homophily are higher in the network of reciprocated followers than in the nonreciprocated network. We suggest that research on political homophily on the Internet should take the political culture and practices of users seriously.
Differences in the ways that men and women use language have long been of interest in the study of discourse. Despite extensive theorizing, actual empirical investigations have yet to converge on a coherent picture of gender differences in language. A significant reason is the lack of agreement over the best way to analyze language. In this research, gender differences in language use were examined using standardized categories to analyze a database of over 14,000 text files from 70 separate studies. Women used more words related to psychological and social processes. Men referred more to object properties and impersonal topics. Although these effects were largely consistent across different contexts, the pattern of variation suggests that gender differences are larger on tasks that place fewer constraints on language use.
This article discusses how the study of metaphoric and more generally, figurative language use contributes to critical discourse analysis (CDA). It shows how cognitive linguists’ recognition of metaphor as a fundamental means of concept- and argument-building can add to CDA's account of meaning constitution in the social context. It then discusses discrepancies between the early model of conceptual metaphor theory and empirical data and argues that discursive-pragmatic factors as well as sociolinguistic variation have to be taken into account in order to make cognitive analyses more empirically and socially relevant. In conclusion, we sketch a modified cognitive approach informed by Relevance Theory within CDA.
Authorship profiling problem is of growing importance in the global information environment, and can help police identify characteristics of the perpetrator of a crime when there are specific suspects to consider. The approach is to apply machine learning to text categorization, for which the corpus of training documents, each labeled according to its category for a particular profiling dimension is taken. The study outlined the kinds of text features that can be found most useful for authorship profiling. The two basic type of features include content based features, and style based features, which reflect the fact that different populations might tend to write about different topics as well as to express themselves differently about the same topic. There are four profiling problems such as determining the author's gender, age, native language, and neuroticism level for the experimental setup. The right combination of linguistic features and machine learning methods enables an automated system to effectively determine such aspects of an anonymous author.
While online, some people self-disclose or act out more frequently or intensely than they would in person. This article explores six factors that interact with each other in creating this online disinhibition effect: dissociative anonymity, invisibility, asynchronicity, solipsistic introjection, dissociative imagination, and minimization of authority. Personality variables also will influence the extent of this disinhibition. Rather than thinking of disinhibition as the revealing of an underlying "true self," we can conceptualize it as a shift to a constellation within self-structure, involving clusters of affect and cognition that differ from the in-person constellation.
Gendertrolling arises out of the same misogyny that fuels other "real life" forms of harassment and abuse of women. This book explains this phenomenon, the way it can impact women's lives, and how it can be stopped.
Designed to educate the general public on a popular and brutal form of harassment against women, Gendertrolling: How Misogyny Went Viral provides key insight into this Internet phenomenon. The book not only differentiates this violent form of trolling from others but also discusses the legal parameters surrounding the issue, such as privacy, anonymity, and free speech online as well as offering legal and policy recommendations for improving the climate for women online.
The analysis of social media and legal aspects of the book make it highly suitable as a reliable source to many modern classes. Additionally, increased awareness among the general and scholarly public of the phenomenon of gendertrolling would help galvanize widespread support for laws, policies, new online content provider protocols, and positive social pressure.
This article undertakes the first known qualitative study focusing on The Red Pill, an online forum wherein heterosexual men attempt to improve their seduction skills by discussing evolutionary psychology and economic theories. My content analysis of twenty-six documents (130,000 words) designated by the community as central to its purpose and ideology shows that The Red Pill is not just an expression of hegemonic masculinity but also explicitly integrates neoliberal and scientific discourses into its seduction strategies. I theorize that the resulting philosophy superficially resolves a contradiction between hegemonic masculinity’s prescriptive emotional walls and an inherent desire for connection by constructing women as exchangeable commodities.
In understanding the influence of virtual communities on its members, examined in this chapter is the role of identity — the member’s conscious knowledge of belonging and the emotional and evaluative significance attached to the membership. Drawing from research and analyses across different disciplines, we present an integrative framework considering and elaborating on the motivational antecedents, constituents, and consequents of virtual community identity. We also discuss its implications for virtual community organizers and highlight promising research opportunities in this area. Purchase this chapter to continue reading all 16 pages >
The very notion of community in an online context can begin a hot debate. Those who would keep the term 'community' for the imagined ideal of cooperation and joint sharing of land, resources, and goals ask: How can community exist without physical co-location and a geographic touchstone? How can the leanness of computermediated communication support the richness inherent in a community? This article revisits the debate about community and online community, and offers a means of conceptualizing and investigating online community using a social network perspective that frees it from its former geographical constraints. It begins with a look at the challenges to community that have fed into arguments against online community, and with a section on the discovery of community online. The article then addresses the case for a network view of community, starting with how the social network approach has been applied to offline communities and how this lays the groundwork for unbundling community from face-to-face interaction and geographic co-location. Following a brief section on the basics of social-network terminology, it returns to the main topic of community, with a focus on the network-level aspects of community, showing how patterns of interpersonal ties can build a network with outcomes greater than the sum of the pairwise connections. The final sections explore variants on the theme of community, first by revisiting the online and offline dichotomy and addressing the advantages, and indeed the inevitability, of considering community from both online and offline sides.
In Chap. 9, we studied the extraction of structured data from Web pages. The Web also contains a huge amount of information in unstructured texts. Analyzing these texts is of great importance as well and perhaps even more important than extracting structured data because of the sheer volume of valuable information of almost any imaginable type contained in text. In this chapter, we only focus on mining opinions which indicate positive or negative sentiments. The task is technically challenging and practically very useful. For example, businesses always want to find public or consumer opinions on their products and services. Potential customers also want to know the opinions of existing users before they use a service or purchase a product.
We report on a series of experiments with convolutional neural networks (CNN)
trained on top of pre-trained word vectors for sentence-level classification
tasks. We first show that a simple CNN with little hyperparameter tuning and
static vectors achieves excellent results on multiple benchmarks. Learning
task-specific vectors through fine-tuning offers further gains in performance.
We additionally propose a simple modification to the architecture to allow for
the use of both task-specific and static word vectors. The CNN models discussed
herein improve upon the state-of-the-art on 4 out of 7 tasks, which include
sentiment analysis and question classification.
In recent years, the mainstream media has identified on-line vitriol as a worsening problem which is silencing women in public discourse, and is having a deleterious effect on the civility of the public cybersphere. This article examines the disconnect between representations of “e-bile” in media texts, and representations of e-bile in academic literature. An exhaustive review of thirty years of academic work on “flaming” shows that many theorists have routinely trivialized the experiences of flame targets, while downplaying, defending, and/or celebrating the discourse circulated by flame producers. Much contemporary scholarship, meanwhile, ignores e-bile completely. My argument is that this constitutes a form of chauvinism (in that it disregards women's experiences in on-line environments) and represents a failure of both theoretical acuity and nerve (given that it evades such a pervasive aspect of contemporary culture). The aim of this paper is not only to help establish the importance of on-line vitriol as a topic for interdisciplinary scholarly research, but to assist in establishing a theoretical problematic where what is seen is barely regarded as a problem. Overall, my argument is that—far from being a technology-related moral panic—e-bile constitutes a field of inquiry with a pressing need for recalibrated scholarly intervention.
The proliferation of online hate groups over the past few years has brought two main issues into focus. First, legal and political scholars have questioned the extent to which such hate speech should be regulated. Second, and perhaps more importantly, there is a great deal of concern about the effects of hate expressed online - specifically, if it incites violence and hostility between groups in the physical world. Understanding cyberhate therefore provides an important challenge for psychologists. Specifically, it is important to understand why online hate is so widespread and the content of online hate sites often so insulting and aggressive, given that the physical activities of hate groups are much more covert. This article attempts to provide a psychological perspective on the nature and purpose of online hate groups and their underlying motivations, their strategies, psychological theories and research that provide insight into disinhibited online behaviour, the actions being taken to combat cyberhate, and some challenges for future research.
This article explores the signal characteristics of gendered vitriol on the Internet – a type of discourse marked by graphic threats of sexual violence, explicit ad hominem invective and unapologetic misogyny. Such ‘e-bile’ is proliferating in the cybersphere and is currently the subject of widespread international media coverage. Yet it receives little attention in scholarship. This is likely related to the fact that discourse of this type is metaphorically ‘unspeakable’, in that its hyperbolic profanity locates it well outside the norms of what is regarded as ‘civil’ discourse. My case, however, is that – despite the risk of causing offence – this discourse must not only be spoken of, but must be spoken of in its unexpurgated entirety. There is, I argue, no other way to adequately assay the nature of a communication mode whose misogynistic hostility has serious ethical and material implications, not least because it has become a lingua franca in many sectors of the cybersphere. Proceeding via unexpurgated ostension is also the best – arguably the only – way to begin mapping the blurry parameters of the discursive field of e-bile, and from there to conduct further inquiry into the ethical appraisal of putative online hostility, and the consideration of possible remedies.
The use of stylometry, authorship recognition through purely linguistic means, has contributed to literary, historical, and criminal investigation breakthroughs. Existing stylometry research assumes that authors have not attempted to disguise their linguistic writing style. We challenge this basic assumption of existing stylometry methodologies and present a new area of research: adversarial stylometry. Adversaries have a devastating effect on the robustness of existing classification methods. Our work presents a framework for creating adversarial passages including obfuscation, where a subject attempts to hide her identity, and imitation, where a subject attempts to frame another subject by imitating his writing style, and translation where original passages are obfuscated with machine translation services. This research demonstrates that manual circumvention methods work very well while automated translation methods are not effective. The obfuscation method reduces the techniques' effectiveness to the level of random guessing and the imitation attempts succeed up to 67% of the time depending on the stylometry technique used. These results are more significant given the fact that experimental subjects were unfamiliar with stylometry, were not professional writers, and spent little time on the attacks. This article also contributes to the field by using human subjects to empirically validate the claim of high accuracy for four current techniques (without adversaries). We have also compiled and released two corpora of adversarial stylometry texts to promote research in this field with a total of 57 unique authors. We argue that this field is important to a multidisciplinary approach to privacy, security, and anonymity.
Anonymity is thought to be an important means for ensuring a free exchange of ideas by encouraging the expression of minority viewpoints. However, we suggest that anonymity’s reduction in awareness of others potentially affects the expression and interpretation of comments that are made during a discussion. In particular, anonymity will increase the likelihood that comments will be made that are contrary to the majority opinion while at the same time decreasing the effect that those contrary arguments have on other group member’s opinions. This paper reports experimental results showing that anonymity led to more overall participation in discussions of ethical scenarios. However, equality of member participation did not differ between anonymous and member-identified groups, and anonymous groups had significantly higher awareness-related comments. This leads to the conclusion that additional participation in anonymous groups accommodates reduced awareness rather than reflecting the increased participation of normally reticent group members. In addition, anonymity led to more arguments in support of questionable behavior, suggesting that the freeing effects of anonymity apply to the social desirability of arguments. Finally, there was less change in opinion under conditions of anonymity than when comments were identified, suggesting that anonymous arguments have less influence on opinions than identified comments.
Using a life course perspective, we explored the development and maintenance of involuntary celibacy for 82 respondents recruited over the I'nternet. Data were collected using an open‐ended electronic questionnaire. Modified grounded theory analysis yielded three groups of involuntary celibates, persons desiring to have sex but unable to find partners. Virgins were those who had never had sex, singles had sex in the past but were unable to establish current sexual relationships, and part‐nereds were currently in sexless relationships. These groups differed on dating experiences, the circumstances surrounding their celibacy, barriers to sexual activity, and the perceived likelihood of becoming sexually active. They were similar, however, in their negative reactions to celibacy. Pervasive in our respondents’ accounts was the theme of becoming and remaining off time in making normative sexual transitions, which in turn perpetuated a celibate life course or trajectory.
This study explores whether the attributes listed in the literature on flaming in email are considered characteristic of flaming by actual email users. Through the creation of a semantic differential scale—called the Message Invectives Scale—the study took eight concepts found in more than 20 research articles on flaming and examined email users' responses to a set of 20 messages in relation to those eight characteristics. Findings indi- cate that in each of the 20 cases, six of the original eight concepts relate to each other to form a common set, which also correlates positively with perceptions of flaming. Some of the messages that scored high for flaming contained profanity, all capital let- ters, excessive exclamation points or question marks, indicating that these attributes also relate to flaming. Based on these findings, recommendations are advanced as to how email should be used to avoid negative attributes that can lead to organizational conflict.
We describe new algorithms for training tagging models, as an alternative to maximum-entropy models or conditional random fields (CRFs). The algorithms rely on Viterbi decoding of training examples, combined with simple additive updates. We describe theory justifying the algorithms through a modification of the proof of convergence of the perceptron algorithm for classification problems. We give experimental results on part-of-speech tagging and base noun phrase chunking, in both cases showing improvements over results for a maximum-entropy tagger.
Cybermobbing aus sprachwissenschaftlicher Perspektive
- Marx
Marx, Konstanze. 2018. "Cybermobbing aus sprachwissenschaftlicher Perspektive. "
Sprachreport 1/18: 1-9. https://ids-pub.bsz-bw.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/7209
Reluctant Virginity: The Relationship between Sexual Status and Self-esteem
- DiMauro
DiMauro, Dina. 2008. "Reluctant Virginity: The Relationship between Sexual Status and Selfesteem. " Theses and Dissertations 717. http://rdw.rowan.edu/etd/717
Defusing Hate: A Strategic Communication Guide to Counteract Dangerous Speech
- Rachel Brown
Brown, Rachel. 2016. Defusing Hate: A Strategic Communication Guide to Counteract
Dangerous Speech. https://www.ushmm.org/m/pdfs/20160229-Defusing-Hate-Guide.pdf
Keras: Deep Learning Library for Theano and Tensorflow
- François Chollet
Chollet, François. 2015. Keras: Deep Learning Library for Theano and Tensorflow.
https://keras.io
The Secret Life of Pronouns. What our Words Say about us
- James W Pennebaker
Pennebaker, James W. 2011. The Secret Life of Pronouns. What our Words Say about us. New
York: Bloomsbury.
Digesting the Red Pill: Masculinity and Neoliberalism in the Manosphere
- Anna K Turnage
Turnage, Anna K. 2007. "Email Flaming Behaviors and Organizational Conflict. " Computer-Mediated Communication 13(1):43-59. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1083-6101.2007.00385.x
Van Valkenburgh, Shawn P. 2018. "Digesting the Red Pill: Masculinity and Neoliberalism in
the Manosphere. " Men and Masculinities. https://doi.org/10.1177/1097184X18816118